Some amazing stories to be found here, and mostly hard sci-fi, which suits me well. "She gave an odd smile, one that wasn't happy and added, "Tough love isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes when you lock the door, the other person never knocks on it again."

Like any collection, there were a couple I loved, a couple that left me wondering why they were written, and the rest were entertaining. The only ones I skipped were ones I'd already read elsewhere.

Most of the stories are easily 4 or 5 stars with only one that I felt deserved less than that. Very, very good collection.

This is the best collection of short stories I've read in years. I can hardly wait to read some more.

A fantastic anthology, with pieces very varied in style. The best part is that I got to read authors I didn't know at all.

While there were a couple of stories in this collection that I didn't care for, there were several stories that I loved so much that I knew I would need to read them a handful of times before I had gotten all that I wanted out of them. After the first read my mind was whirling and wondering what I had missed, at hidden layers of insight. What a wonderful feeling.

Being an SF reader for over 50 years, it's sometimes hard for me to find really original stories. David Hartwell has done that. A good collection, ranging from Good to Excellent. I've read a Christmas SF anthology of his, and I certainly plan to seek out his other "Year's Best" books.

Individual stories rated as follows:5* - A classic.4* - A really good story, recommended reading. 3* - A decent story2* - Not a good story, something seriously inhibited any enjoyment1* - Unreadable and/or a complete waste of timeLindholm, Megan: “Old Paint”**Cornell, Paul: “The Ghosts of Christmas”***Reed, Robert: “Prayer”***Lee, Yoon Ha: “The Battle of Candle Arc” **Wolfe, Gene: “Dormanna” ***Arnason, Eleanor: “Holmes Sherlock: A Hwarhath Mystery” ***McMullen, Sean: “Electrica” ***Frieman, C.S...

The Year's Best SF 18, edited by David G. Hartwell, was a distinct pleasure to read. The pleasure began with the very first story, "Old Paint." Megan Lindholm tells the story of a family that inherits grandpa's old car, a woody-style station wagon, whose technology is way behind the times. Mom even makes her teenager learn to drive it, rather than just tell it where to go. Very uncool. When the youngster takes it to a shady nano-paint place, and the car catches a nasty virus, well, this tale st

A much more interesting and carefully curated set of stories than in the last anthology I read (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year (Volume 7) , also a 2013 collection). Favorites included: "Old Paint," "Perfect Day," "Swift as a Dream and Fleeting as a Sigh," "Liberty's Daughter," "Waves," and....several others. I also realized how much I liked "Close Encounters," one of the stories featured in both anthologies, after reading it a second time. Such a great collection!

While this book had a number of very good stories, I ranked it number 3 of the four anthologies I read for the 2013-2014 year. The stories I liked a lot were (ranked):- Week for Day (also in the Dozois anthology)- Electrica - The Battle of Candle Arc- The Peak of Eternal Light- The Woman Who Shook the World Tree- Waves

Old Paint: very creativeThe ghosts of Christmas: wow, crazyDormanna: makes you wonder about those so-called "imaginary" friends kids haveHolmes Sherlock: very creative. Interesting and comprehensive social development of an alien world within a short storyElectrica: gothic, Victorian, steampunky. Good storyPerfect Day: You can totally understand how this story might be prescientLiberty's Daughter: greatly enjoyed; Weep for Day very creativeIn plain sight I had a hard time following this one, bu

Very nice anthology; one of his best in this series.TOC & story notes:http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?4...2021, partial reread. Highlights this time:• Old Paint (2012) • novelette by Megan Lindholm. Grandad's old car comes back, saves the kids! Hartwell thinks it's one of her best, and one of the best of that year. I agree. Solid 4 stars. Lucky you: online here, http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/lindh...• Swift as a Dream and Fleeting as a Sigh (2012) • short story by John Barnes. A coal-minin...

I think it's wonderful that science fiction has become so very mainstream since I first started reading it in the very early 1970s, and writing about it in the 1980s. That wasn't always the case. In fact, one of the better essays I wrote in high school was about the then-prevalent marginalization of SF, entitled "We Have Always Lived in the Ghetto." No longer can litterateurs dismiss SF out of hand, though—although the genre's critics still exist, of course, they have to be much more creative th...

Stories of note in this collection that I haven't called out in other reviews: Sean McMullen's "Electrica", Naomi Kritzer's "Liberty's Daughter", Ken Liu's "Waves", and Michael Swanwick's "The Woman who Shook the Worldtree".

Another outstanding entry in this excellent series. All the stories take the reader to new and interesting places, sometimes by provoking deeper thought and sometimes with laughter. The sheer amount of diversity among the authors is carried through in the stories themselves. Highly recommended.

This is the second of Hartwell's Year's Best SF that I've read. The last one, the 15th, was somewhat disappointing to me. This collection was significantly better than that one, which I'm pretty sure proves that a year's "best of" collection can only be as good as the fiction that was released in the year that it covers.This 18th edition covers the year of 2012, which, if this collection is representative, was a terrific year for short fiction. As I'm sure most of you have gathered, I don't read...

Essendo una raccolta di racconti, il voto è la media dei vari racconti.Old Paint, di Megan Lindholm: 4Toccante, delicato e piacevolissimo.The ghosts of Christmas, di Paul Cornell: 3Un bel racconto che richiama Dickens e i paradossi temporali.Prayer, di Robert Reed: 2Sarebbe un racconto interessante, ma resta troppo aperto... incompiuto.The battle of Candle Arc, di Yoon Ha Lee: 2Racconto oscuro (nei termini e nel significato) che richiama troppo a possibili progetti futuri. Incompiuto come raccon...

The third “year’s best” collection I’ve picked up this year, this one being the last of the David Hartwell collections. I think his health was in decline even while he put this volume together. There wasn’t a volume in 2014 or 2015, and he died unexpectedly early this year. I have a solid dozen of the books in this series, going back to the first one, picked up when I worked in a bookstore, and at least half a dozen in the Year’s Best Fantasy collections he did as well as other, unrelated collec...

I have to admit, I was getting pretty depressed by science fiction anthologies published in recent years, but Year's Best SF 18 was a real eye-opener. There's some classic SF (or will be considered classic in the future) being published by new writers. I found the selections from the writers I never heard of better than the old-timers like Gene Wolfe (who did a short, overly sentimental piece) and "In Plain Sight" by Pat Cadigan (who had a great set-up but not much else.) Other than these (thoro...